Michael Gira has been making limited edition handmade CDs to raise money for new studio recordings for a while now, but with the success of the current Swans tour this one sold out in 10 hours. That's more than one gone every minute.

Plus there's at least one buyer out there who went for option 8, and several who chipped in over $100. Seems like this strategy has finally become properly successful for Mr Gira - these things CAN work, depending on a number of factors.

The Return of The Dark Net (well, it's a return for those who've forgotten all about it, or just couldn't give a monkey's, since its ugly head was forcibly reared during its last news recycle.)

Out of reach of regular internet searches is the secretive online world known as the 'dark web' - anonymous, virtually untraceable global networks used by political activists and criminals alike. ... And it is not just drugs which are available on this online black market. Fake passports, guns - even child pornography.

And I only post about this on WC because:a) as net's go, WC has been pretty dark for years.b) I know we're all far too mature and sensible to read an article, think "sounds like fun!" and go look for how to access something you may not already have been aware of.

"made a purchase of the hallucinogen DMT - a class A drug, ranking it on a par with heroin and cocaine"

POSSESSION PUNISHABLE BY SEVEN YEARS IN PRISON!!!1!1elebenty - are these people even AWARE that the stuff is being made INSIDE THEIR BODIES - ffs

The war on drugs finally goes right round the u-bend and outlaws our own neurotransmitters. Great! Next: dopamine banned. And these guys who write this stuff are what passes for investigative journalists in this enlightened age, eh? Faaark. It's... just... dizzying.

Two articles in the International business Times report that Anonymous hacked the website of far-right political party American third Position (A3P) and the e-mail of its leader and found evidence of extensive links between Ron Paul and A3P including conference calls between Paul and the obard of A3P, numerous A3P members working in the Paul campaign and A3P acting as go-between to organize meetings between Paul and Nick Griffin ,leader of the British ational Party.

Quote:Members of the nationalist American Third Position Party (A3P), whose website was defaced by Anonymous, organised Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul's meetings and campaigns, according emails hacked by the collective.Chairman of the British National Party (BNP) Nick Griffin also took part in meetings with Paul and other representatives of A3P."According to these messages, Ron Paul has regularly met with many A3P members, even engaging in conference calls with their board of directors," read a statement from Anonymous.It also claims that Paul received financial support from other white power groups, such as the online hate forum Stormfront, founded by Don Black, a white supremacist. There is even a photograph of Paul with Black, a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and a current member of the American Nazi Party. Paul allegedly refused to return donations from Black and Stormfront. Black told The New York Times that Paul's newsletter had inspired him to become a supporter.

@ AtomicSloth: thanks to your DM article link, I now have this pearl of wisdom in my head, ffs. Damn my ADD.

For everybody's sake, I haven't included anything about the article. Just be warned: this vapid, vacuous, utterly worthless and absurd snippet of "information" may replace something important you already have stored in your brainpan or could prevent future stuff being saved there.

Isn't this pretty much the start of a bunch of alien invasion and pandemic stories?

The world holds its breath, hoping for the best after six days of radio silence from Antarctica -- where a team of Russian scientists is racing the clock and the oncoming winter to dig to an alien lake far beneath the ice.

The team from Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI) have been drilling for weeks in an effort to reach isolated Lake Vostok, a vast, dark body of water hidden 13,000 ft. below the surface of the icy continent. Lake Vostok hasn't been exposed to air in more than 20 million years.

@Ben Gwalchmai - cool, but not so surprising. I mean, consider - they are using 3 of the exact same kind of plant. Figure that, as the plant doesn't actually have a nervous system, that if cutting it releases some kind of gas that trigger's it's own leaves to be exude a bit of toxicity, it makes sense that other, exact same kinds of plants in close proximity are going to be equally triggered by the same signal. It's not like the gas has any idea which specific plant it came out of, and the leaves have no way of knowing if the gas came from some other part of it's own root-fed entity.

The narrator is quite over the top in gosh-wow-gee breathlessness - but this really doesn't look like anything especially amazing or surprising to me. Certainly it doesn't look like anything I'd call "communication".